OMG its the Machinima BLog!

Category Archives: School

What a weird thing, for over 5 weeks this blog was unreachable! I had no idea why, and cause the WordPress support forum said something about sites being unreachable due to ISP’s blocking the wrong server, I thought it was related to that!

After inquiring at my ISP about it (they said nope) I started digging around in this site, the admin page was still reachable! I started opening pages one by one to see if it was related to one of them. And it was!

The page explaining how I removed malicious code from a site didn’t load for some reason, even after editing. WordPress probably tagged it thinking that it was harmful to others, the thing is that they don’t show that! *sigh*

As an image, here is the post that did it all:

To be safe you have to type out the links if you want to, to prevent the blog from going unreachable again.

And a small update while I’m at it…

Next week my 3rd year (of 4) at the University of Applied Sciences starts, with half a year of internship xDI’m going to be an intern at EngageIT, a company that applies gamification to contact center’s (you know, the people who answer your support calls/mails)
Gamification is the mixing of games to something more daily, like for example taking out the trash, children might go and take it out but avoid certain pavement stones, in essence to make the job more fun! There are countless examples of children game-ifying things that are normal to us, and applying that knowledge to us adults shows a great increase in productivity! Go and look at http://www.thefuntheory.com/ it has many more examples!
I’m really excited to start, an interesting topic in an actual business environment! 😀

During my holiday I spent some time working on MAV warfare, adding abilities and so on.

I added bullets and a basic grappling hook, and I started a little bit on another gamemode, Capture the Flag rather than FFAKOTH (free for all king of the hill)
Also I added a small radar system, after furiously looking up how to convert 3D coördinates onto a 2D plane 😛

In this post I’ll talk about what I did for school and a few project updates, progress has been made :D.

The project entertainment game (see previous post) has been completed, and you can see some of the screenshots at the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TwistedMindsGame
Actual gameplay you ask? Why not play it yourself! Its up on Dropbox <LINK> Just run the exe and you’re set!

One of the courses we had was 3D modeling, in order to learn/appreciate 😉 (for us programmers) the design side of games.
We had three exercises, make a house, a rough terrain vehicle, and a face (based on your own)
Results….well its not exactly perfect, but for someone who rarely models…

The face (or at least something that resembles one)

A tachikoma (the vehicle)

The house (based on Delta Flyer)

Another course we had was called Algorithms and Datastructures in Games, where we were introduced to things like A* and Dijkstra’s algorithm. Me and the partner I had to do the practicum with actually managed to confuse the teacher. Our A* algorithm behaved like it should, but in a few levels it went a little bit differently then what was supposed to be. The code was fine, what could it be? Our program then got discussed with the entire course team, but no answer was found! Magic! 😀
For those interested in the code and the document we created, here is a link to the NetBeans project: <LINK>

Currently at school we are busy with C++ (a course), AI (another course) and C++ in Android (a project) for which details can’t be revealed just yet.

And now, the projects….

The intro for Starbase United has been written, but the actual production will take A)More time then we have available and B)Money…
We are considering making a trailer and putting it up for Kickstarter.

MAV Warfare, (the game me and http://kjeld21.wordpress.com/ are working on from time to time)
We have basic multiplayer and a simple gamemode ready, and are currently working on the TDM gamemode.

The Klingon translator has got a few letters added to its vocabulary.

Oolas machinima,
We ran into some trouble, but with LOTRO becoming 6 years old the things holding us back seem to have disappeared. Filming will begin in the May holliday!

The next tutorial is, like many other projects, put on the backburner due to school (note that I started writing it 170 days ago -.- ).

Some secret is going on in the background, I don’t quite get it but the other project members are quite excited, its got something to do about the Oculus Rift headset…. Me want! 😀

As expected I messed up the pitch, so my game idea wasn’t chosen. Not that I cared much, I knew I was going to mess it up. I can’t forcibly talk about something in front of people. That was one of the reasons I dropped idea 2 on my list (see previous post) and took number 3. I get really nervous, forget half of what I wanted to say and race trough it like an F1 car…. Now me and someone who got trough paired up and we have to explain his idea a bit further and put it into a business model (what platform we want it to be on and money related things)

We have to pitch this next week and if we get chosen we somehow get to create a team around us with other students. Then its onto actual development :O In the case that we don’t get chosen we get integrated in other people’s teams.

Thats the project planning, every sprint stands for a stage in development:

Sprint 1: Proof of Concept, at the end we have to show that we can somehow make the actual product.

Sprint 2: Pitchable product, we should have the project done up to a point where it can be pitched to potential publishers

Sprint 3: Showable product, the game should be > 80% done up to this point and have all the major features such as game mechanics/assets etc.

Sprint 4: Releasable product, the game should be ready to go from closed beta to release.

Also I started learning Unity, it is suggested for a couple of courses, and Design3 just happens to be a group with lots of Unity courses 😀 Following tutorials and trying to get my first assignment done with it in under 4 days…. wohooo 😛

PEG, translated in Dutch is a bad spelling version of pech, meaning bad luck. Lucky for us PEG is an acronym for Project Entertainment Game.

A bit weird name since games tend to be entertaining by themselves, no need to put it in the title again! But who am I to criticize project names 😛

The idea of this project is that tomorrow everyone pitches his/her (ultimate) game idea. I already got a few ideas lying around collecting dust but…. Idea 1: Impossible with current level of technology (in case you have a working holodeck please contact me 😉 ) Idea 2: Kind of want to keep this for myself. But the basic idea is turning Legendary Hatters into a game.
So I’m left with the next thing on my list, idea 3. Which is Dhovakiin!
Thats right, the game I worked on for a few days but dropped due to lack of programming knowledge!

Ill talk about the game in a minute. What happens after the pitch is that the ‘jury’ selects half of all the ideas, pairs two people together, and they are the selection jury for their idea/team! After that the game needs to be developed in half a year, and in 4 development ‘sprints’. Somewhere in between a game publisher comes in the picture. So if its good enough (a sellable game!) it might actually get out in the world!

I just hope for the best with my idea. Here it is:

Take the shout words from Skyrim, combine it with the spell casting system from Magicka, and put it in an adventure platformer.

The level has no pre-defined way to solve, the player has to use his creativity to get to the end.

There are as you can see in the (pre-alpha) screenshots I made (in my previous year) 7 base words, they define the base action of the shout. Other words change the effect, or potency.

As far as I know there is no big story, apart from a very basic idea that a Dhovakiin in 2012 fights for freedom from the evil villains which have taken the workers at Gars Incorporated (no, not Mars! :P) hostage. And for some reason our protagonist likes a Gars every now and then.

So humour and creativity saving the world and giving us back some candy bars 😛